ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA

stevenmu

Hi all,

At the moment I'm running a s754 A64 3200+, with 2Gb DDR400 and an AGP 7800GS.

It runs quite well, and handles new games pretty reasonably, but it's not lightening fast, the main culprit obviously being the aging cpu. I've also been eyeing multi-core cpus for a while now, for a variety of reasons (the main one being of course that I just want one! ). It's also been over a year since I upgraded the GPU and RAM, so the upgrade itch is setting in again.

I considered doing a full shiny new build with a q6600, but that would cost quite a bit (taking new RAM and GPU and everything else into account) and I could really use the money for other things at the moment. So first off, I decided to look at maybe getting a s939 or even an AM2 mobo that would still support AGP and DDR400, meaning all I'd have to change is the mobo and cpu and I could have myself a nice A64 FX2 rig. While doing that I thought I'd chance my arm and see if I could find a mobo that would support LGA775/Core 2 and DDR400 and AGP.

After a bit of looking I found the ASRock 4CoreDual-VSTA. Anandtech seem quite fond of them, and legitreviews think the previous ASRock 775Dual-VSTA (same kind of thing but not quad core compatible) is very good. Reviews seem to suggest that running a Core 2 cpu on one with only DDR400 is only marginally slower than modern memory. (and a lot of the difference seemed to be down to using a PCI-e 4x connection for the GPU instead of a PCI-e 16x, using AGP 8x would cancel some of that out too)

So my plan now is to pick up one of these and a q6600 (€290 from hadwareversand + shipping) and swap them into my system keeping my DDR400 and AGP 7800GS. My thinking is that this will give me a pretty damn good system for now, and possibly help with futher upgrades down the road (if I get the cash together for a shiny new build in 6 months time, the q6600 will still be pretty decent, only the €50 I spend on the mobo now will be wasted).

I'm just curious before I order to see what people think ? Has anyone tried this route or used one of these mobos before ?

Offalycool

I havent used one myself but the folks over at Micromart fourm have been happy enough with it. There is a new version out now with SATA 2. It's no great overclocker but if you pick up an e4*00 series it will go far because of the lower FSB. There seems to be little performance drop with PCIE with the last gen of graphic cards, but its worse with the new cards, some wont even work at all. Sounds like a great stopgap solution for a slightly nackered old PC. Might pick one up myself for my previous machine. http://forum.micromart.co.uk/Forum19-1.aspx

Edit: down the road there will be PCIE 2 and next gen Intel chips.. not that far off really.

stevenmu

Thanks for the link, just what I wanted to see. As good as review sites can be is always good to see what genuine punters think.

I'd seen there was a new SATA2 model, I was thinking of going with the VSTA because there doesn't seem mech difference (bar SATA2 which is no use to me at the moment) and mainly because it's the only one hardwareversand seem to have, and they have the cheapest q6600 I've seen. I'll have a look around though and see how things work out with regards to shipping and stuff.

8T8

You might want to go with perhaps just a dual core Core 2 instead of the quad as revised quad's are in the works and by the time you do a full switch they will probably be available.

That is unless you have lots of tasks for the quad core otherwise it can be a bit of a waste without multi-threaded software.

stevenmu

That's a good suggestion, thanks. Thinking about it, I can't really justify a quad, it's really only techno-lust that has me wanting one. For what I'll be using it for a duo will be cheaper and perform better. And with the new stuff coming over the next year or so, Phenom, Intels hypertransport/on-board mem controller, PCI-e 2 I'll probably want to replace the lot anyway.